Living a digital life with empty pockets

If you followed my earlier post Hints & Tips: Creating a low-ARC look then you’ll know it’s a Good Thing to wear a low-lag avatar or to keep your ARC (Avatar Rendering Cost) as low as possible when taking part in hunts and clothing fairs and generally visiting places that you know will be incredibly busy.

Well, I just managed to get Mar’s ARC even lower, and still have her looking pretty good. As before, she’s wearing dollarbie t-shirt and cropped pants from Random Fashions (bought at The Gnubie Store) but now I’ve found a way to ditch the prim hair (but still have hair!) and I’ve found even lower-ARC shoes. So from 95 ARC she’s now down to just 38 ARC.

UPDATE: Since I made this post, I’ve managed to get Mar’s ARC even lower. Click here to see how I did it.

Lag. Ugh – we all hate it. Ever been to an area chock-full of avatars (Clothing Fair? Sn@tch sale? Big gridwide treasure hunt?) and been completely bogged down so you can’t move? Well, there are many reasons for lag, from SL simply having a bad day, your connection not being up to scratch, your computer being rather old or having a less-than-stellar graphics card, or the amount of people around you, and what they’re wearing.

Let me introduce you to Avatar Rendering Cost, or ARC. This is a slightly controversial issue, since it is possible for people to harrass other avatars with a high ARC, but it can also be extremely useful. While it’s impossible for you to do anything about the high-ARC avatars around you, what you can do is put together a low-ARC look for yourself, so that you’re not the one causing problems for others.

See the numbers above Mar’s head in this pic?

On the left is her low-ARC look, which has an ARC of just 95. Sure, you can go much lower, but she looks nice, and she has prim hair and shoes. On the right, though, she has an enormous ARC (well into the red) of 7844. That’s all down to what she’s wearing, from hair and dress to shoes and jewellery.

About

About SL for Nowt

So what is SL for Nowt all about? (Hey, that rhymed…)

Initially, I wanted to see if it was possible to create an entirely new avatar in the Second Life world, without putting in any money of my own. I planned to do this by picking money from money trees only. No camping (sitting on chairs/mopping floors/doing other activities that make an area look busy, in return for small amounts of cash), and definitely no begging! I set myself the goal of a minimum 50L$ per day from the money trees, and met this target on most days. I even exceeded it a lot on a few days. Along the way, I spotted (and screencaptured) many odd things, met some interesting people, got annoyed at the rudeness of ’some people’ and generally had a fun time.

The blog has now taken a different path, since my original goals have now been met. Now, SL for Nowt is all about finding freebies and cheapies, living a virtual existence in the Second Life world on the cheap, and helping out newbies as much as possible.

SL for Nowt has moved away from WordPress hosting, as I was unhappy with WordPress inserting ads into my content that I had no control over. It’s now self-hosted, so please hop over and pay a visit to the new blog!

Disclaimer

SL for Nowt is an entirely unofficial blogsite, and is not endorsed by Linden Research, Inc.